The Dream of the Butterfly
by DB Sommer
Summary: Aliens come to Earth, and the truth about the godlike powers is revealed under tragic circumstances.


The Dream of the Butterfly

Standard disclaimer: As usual, I don't own the characters to the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

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It all started innocently enough that day after classes ended. The entire SOS Brigade was in the clubroom. Yuki was reading off in a corner. Haruhi was sexually harassing Asahina yet again, and Itsuki and I were playing go, with me winning for a change.

Haruhi was badgering Asahina about backless maid outfits, which caught my attention. That's why I was looking out the window when the view outside seemed to blur ever so slightly. When it refocused, the air was filled with what could only be space ships, so many of them that they blocked out the sky. They came in all shapes and sizes, from the classic saucers and phallic rockets, to the more unusual, to the outright bizarre. One appeared to be some sort of giant whale with bubbled domes along its flesh, and yet another I couldn't exactly make out, since my eyes kept sliding away from the edges, like my mind couldn't conceive what I was seeing.

Haruhi shot out of her seat and shouted, "Yes! I knew it had to happen! This is a close encounter of the third kind."

Yuki was suddenly next to me, speaking quietly, obviously to keep Haruhi from hearing, not that she wasn't already lost in a fantasy world of what to do with the aliens. Maybe dress them up in one of Asahina's outfits? "I count space ships of five hundred and ninety two races, many of them blood enemies of one another."

I understood what she meant. There was only one reason so many races could have united to come to Earth: Haruhi. And it was unlikely it was for anything good if they were showing up in this kind of force.

Itsuki seemed to have the same idea judging by the concerned look on his face. He headed for the door, saying, "Why don't we head to the basement just in case—"

The door disintegrated in an explosion, as did Itsuki. I saw him actually blown into tiny bits. My mouth was open at the time. I think something solid went down my throat. I prayed it was a splinter of wood, and not the alternative.

Standing amidst the carnage of what was once a doorway and a man were two green-skinned aliens, mountains of muscle that looked almost comical dressed in the nearest approximation of what might have been sailor fukus done by Dali on a bad acid trip. Both had what appeared to be some sort of futuristic rifles in their arms.

Everyone had frozen, even Yuki, at the unexpected thing. My own mind was reeling with Itsuki being… dead. Really dead. While I had been close to death before, including the world nearly ending at Haruhi's imagination, even that had been so surreal it provided no true panic. No terror. But this, I swore I could smell the blood and flesh of my friend in my nostrils.

One of the big green aliens held a box like object in his hand, sweeping the room. It produced a high pitched beep that sounded like a mouse sucking on helium. It started slowly, passing over Asahina and beeping just a touch more. However it picked up in tempo as it drew near Haruhi.

Yuki finally reacted, murmuring something while holding up her hand. The other alien, without the 'Haruhi Detector', fired his rifle at Yuki just as two bolts of energy flew from her hands. Each hit their respective alien dead on, leaving big holes, impossible things like you see in cartoons, in the torsos of both. They slumped to the floor in the closest alien approximation of lifelessness.

But the bolt from the alien struck Yuki in the chest. It seemed to fizzle as it splattered against her school uniform.

"A continuum blaster," Yuki said. "They had been galactically banned. They use energy pulses to rend matter and send it randomly across time and space." She looked me in the eye, and for the first time, I saw panic in her face. "I am undooooooAAAAAAAA!" Her scream became something not meant for human ears as she was ripped apart molecule by molecule from one end/when of the universe to the other.

There was nothing left to show Yuki Nagato, artificial human, had ever existed.

Haruhi finally found her voice, reality not conforming to her desires in even the slightest way for once. "Whu… what's going on?"

That snapped me out of my stupor. Haruhi. I had to save Haruhi. She was all that mattered now. I grabbed her by the hand and forced her out of the door. Asahina followed. I know I should have grabbed her hand as well, but my thoughts were centered on Haruhi's safety. Itsuki had been right. The basement. If we could hide there, maybe… god. I didn't know. But if we stayed where we were, we would die. That was the only certainty I had.

There was a loud whinny from the end of the hall. Another alien. Another impossible sight. He looked like a Norse warrior on the back of a horse, save that both he and the steed were pure obsidian black. I'm not even sure if he was astride the horse or was a part of it. He charged down the hall, some sort of bladed polearm held back, ready to deliver a blow.

I ran with Haruhi down the hall, dragging her with me. Asahina froze, shouting, "This never happened!" over and over. I tried yelling at her to move, but she was could only scream how this wasn't possible.

She did it right up to the moment the polearm cleaved her head neatly from her shoulders.

The horseman was too fast. He would get us before we could move another ten feet, and judging by how easily the blade passed through Asahina, I couldn't use my body to shield Haruhi: it would just go clean through me and whatever was behind.

For the first time today luck was with me. There was a stairwell right next to us. Keeping hold of Haruhi's hand, I threw my body through the door, Haruhi falling on top of me, just evading the blade that had swung by where I had been a moment before.

Panicked, I ran up the stairs, Haruhi babbling incoherently now. I wanted to do the same, but I had to save her. She was everything to me.

We made it to the top of the stairwell and emerged on the roof. A tactical error, considering the sky was filled with spacecraft and we would be directly below them, without even walls for protection. But that was not what was most disturbing. No. Not a sky filled with thousands of aliens out of our blood.

It was the floating human-sized statue of Kannon that was right before us.

In its numerous arms, spread out like the figures I had scene of it in Buddhist temples, it held a lantern, a disk, a jug of some sort of liquid, and another one of those alien detectors in its hands. One beeping madly.

Before I could throw myself in front of Haruhi it tossed the liquid from its jug of at her. It splashed all over her face and head.

And it melted her wherever it touched.

It must have been painless, her head was melted by the acid in an instant. No time for pain, nothing left to feel it. I didn't feel anything either. A numbness had settled over everything. It was the end. There was no time for anything. Except for one anomaly.

The detector was still beeping frantically.

Our eyes met, the alien and me, and it was then I realized what the truth was. All this time, it wasn't Haruhi who had been the one with the powers, like everyone thought.

It was me.

It did all begin the first time I met her on that day at school. She was some sort of trigger, or maybe there was just something about her from the instant I met her that made me want to please her, and I used my powers to draw espers and time travelers and aliens to her side. Maybe it had been love at first sight. Who knew? But it didn't matter. The only thing that did was that I had the power.

I realized it a split second before a laser shot from the lantern, a pencil thin beam that cut me on a diagonal, severing me in two. But it was too late. I now knew I had the power of creation.

And of damnation.

I used that power with the speed of thought.

The love of my life was dead, and were it not for my need for revenge, I would join her. But I cannot. I know on some instinctive level I need form to control. Perhaps a limitation from being born in this world instead of simply springing into existence. It matters little.

It came to me in an instant. I saw what image I would remake the world in. Oh, what I envisioned.

Though I am the butterfly and the world is my dream, I will not emerge from my cocoon. There is nothing in it for me. Still, I will see them die, every single one of these alien assassins. But not all at once. Oh no. Let them die as my friends did. By flame and blade and blood, let them die… no, be assassinated, one by one in tortured agony that will be felt throughout the universe from now until the end of time. No matter the cost to anyone else.

Let it begin.

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"Here comes another one."

Kei Kurono watched as an attractive woman was created by the light from the black ball again. Older this time, well, in her thirties, at a guess. Salarywoman, judging by her business outfit. And for a change, not a rack to die for. At least she didn't look like another fucking vampire. He really, really wanted to kill the two that were on the team, since they were instrumental in his death. At least from what everyone told him.

Since his return, Kei had taken to explaining things to the noobs. Five of them this time. They would need them if this mission was anything like the Nurarihyon. Not that he had been alive for it, and he was glad. It sounded more hellish than the Buddhist temple mission with its living statues that had killed everyone and nearly him as well. Nurarihyon had taken two teams, and the Osaka Team had a lot more heavy hitters than theirs, and still nearly all of the Osaka team had died. Being sole survivor once had been bad enough, but never again.

Kei spoke to them. "All right people, listen up. My name is Kei, and you have been brought back from the dead by this mysterious black ball with the mysterious guy in it who doesn't do anything but stay in a curled up fetal position with an oxygen mask on his face and intravenous tubes in his body. In a few moments the ball will inform you your lives now belong to it, and you will kill the aliens it shows you on its screen. And it means outer space kind, not illegal. After the announcement, it will open its sides and offer you a weird bodysuit that will give you fantastic powers, and guns to kill the aliens with. If you don't do as it says and try to leave the hunting ground, the ball will blow up your head and resurrect someone else for the next hunt. If you don't want to kill the aliens, that's fine, but they'll be trying to kill you, so I recommend you whack them first."

One of the new guys raised his hand.

Kei said, "I doubt if I'll have time to explain anything that will make sense to you, but go ahead."

"Why?" was all the guy asked.

Kei looked at him helplessly. "Nobody knows. It's just the way it is, and that's that."

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[End fic]

Well, you have to admit, it would be a rational explanation. ^_^ My first idea had been Haruhi ending up getting killed in a car accident and ending up in the Gantz room, not thrilled to discover she's expected to kill all the aliens she meets (though seeing Haruhi in a Gantz outfit in one of her poses with an SOS Brigade thing wrapped on her arm and a weapon in hand is appealing). Then I remembered Raye Johnson's comments about Kyon possibly being the real power, and this one came to me. Motive to want the aliens dead in gruesome ways, the ability to make reality conform to his desires, and a being that simply remains in a ball. Hey, it fits.

And by the way, I don't own Gantz either.


End file.
